For decades, to the delight of both children and adults, bakers have been adding fillings to such pastries as eclairs and creme puffs. The tools with which bakers have added these fillings have ranged from simple non-porous bags which are squeezed to force viscous fluids into cavities in pastries, to more elaborate devices using valves, pistons and nozzles. The result of the baker's work has been tasty foods having a delightfully sweet filling. However, because of their design, most prior art devices have been useful only for foods having a particular shape or length.
Most prior art devices also are limited by their inability to allow determination of whether complete filling of a food product has occurred. Most do not allow monitoring of the purity of the filling, possibly allowing foreign matter into the food, or fouling the insertion of the filling. Finally, prior art devices generally have had straight insertion nozzles, limiting their use to items having generally elongated shapes.
For this reason, foods which have been filled generally have been elongate or solid, since an elongate filler is only effective for these shapes. Foods such as donuts and bagels are not normally filled because of the limitations imposed by elongate nozzles.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide apparatus for filling food having a coiled nozzle for insertion into food.
It is another object of the present invention to provide apparatus for filling food having a nozzle which can have various cross-sectional shapes;
Additional objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.